The Rock Rats

“Simple economics. There’s so many of them out there claiming asteroids that they’re keeping the price of metals and minerals too low. Supply and demand. They’re overdoing the supply.”

“Commodities prices are low, except for food products,” Verwoerd agreed.

“And sinking,” Humphries pointed out. “But if we controlled the supply of raw materials—”

“Which means controlling the rock rats.”

“Right.”

“We could stop selling them supplies,” Verwoerd suggested.

Humphries waved a hand in the air. “They’d just buy their goods from Astro. I don’t want that.”

She nodded.

“No, I think our first step should be to establish a base of operations on Ceres.”

“On Ceres?”

“Ostensibly, it will be a depot for the supplies we sell to the rock rats,” Humphries said, sliding into his commodious high-backed chair. If he desired, the chair would massage his body or send waves of soothing warmth through him. At this moment, Humphries wanted neither.

Verwoerd gave the appearance of thinking over his statement for several moments. “And actually?”

“It’ll be a cover for putting our own people out there; a base for knocking the rock rats out of the Belt.”

Verwoerd smiled coldly. “Once we open the base, we cut our prices for the supplies we sell the prospectors and miners.”

“Cut our prices? Why?”

“To get them buying from HSS and not Astro. Tie them to us.”

Nodding, Humphries said, “We could give them more favorable terms for leasing spacecraft, too.”

Now she took one of the upholstered chairs in front of his desk. Crossing her long legs absently, she said, “Better yet, lower the interest rates on purchase loans.”

“No, no. I don’t want them to own the vessels. I want them to lease the spacecraft from us. I want them tied to Humphries Space Systems.”

“Under contract to HSS?”

Humphries leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Right. I want those rock rats working for me.”

“At prices that you set,” she said.

“We allow the prices for raw ores to keep going down,” Humphries mused. “We encourage the independents to bring in so much ore that the prices are forced constantly downward. That will drive them out of the field, sooner or later.”

“Leaving only the people who are under contract to HSS,” Verwoerd agreed.

“That way, we gain control of the costs of exploration and mining,” he said, “and on the other end we also control the prices for the refined metals and other resources that we sell to Selene and Earth.”

“But individual rock rats could sell to companies on Earth on their own, independently,” she pointed out.

“So what?” Humphries snapped. “They’ll just be undercutting each other until they drive themselves out of business. They’ll be cutting their own throats.”

“Supply and demand,” Verwoerd murmured.

“Yes. But when we get the rock rats working exclusively for us, we’ll control the supply. No matter what the demand, we’ll be able to control prices. And profits.”

“A little on the devious side.” She smiled, though.

“It worked for Rockefeller.”

“Until the anti-trust laws were passed.”

“There aren’t any anti-trust laws in the Belt,” Humphries said. “No laws at all, come to think of it.”

Verwoerd hesitated, thinking, then said, “It will take some time to drive out all the independents. And there’s still Astro to consider.”

“I’ll handle Astro when the time comes.”

“Then you’ll have complete control of the Belt.”

“Which means that in the long run it won’t cost us anything to set up a base on Ceres.” It was a statement, not a question.

“That’s not exactly how the accounting department will see it.”

He laughed. “Then why don’t we do it? Establish a base on Ceres and bring those rock rats under our control.”

She gave him a long, careful look, a look that said, I know there’s more to this than you’re telling me. You’ve got a hidden agenda, and I’m pretty sure I know what it is.

But aloud all she said was, “We can use this base on Ceres to centralize all the maintenance work, as well.”

He nodded an acknowledgement to her. “Good idea.”

“Offer the lowest possible terms on the maintenance contracts.”

“Get the rock rats to come to HSS for maintenance,” he agreed.

“Make them dependent on you.”

He laughed again. “Gillette’s dictum.”

She looked puzzled.

“Give ’em the razor,” he explained. “Sell ’em the blades.”

DOSSIER: OSCAR JIMINEZ

The illegitimate son of an illegitimate son, Oscar Jiminez was picked up by the police in one of their periodic sweeps through the barrios of Manila when he was seven years old. He was small for his age, but already an expert at begging, picking pockets, and worming his way past electronic security systems that would have stopped someone bigger or less agile. The usual police tactic was to beat everyone mercilessly with their old- fashioned batons, rape the girls and the better-looking boys, then drive their prisoners far out into the countryside and leave them to fend for themselves. Until they got caught again. Oscar was lucky. Too small and scrawny to attract even the most perverse of the policemen, he was tossed from a moving police van into a roadside ditch, bleeding and covered with welts.

The lucky part was that they had thrown him out near the entrance to the regional headquarters of the New Morality. The Philippines were still heavily Catholic, but Mother Church had grudgingly allowed the mostly Protestant reformers to operate in the island nation with only a minimum of interference. After all, the conservative bishops who ran the Philippine Church and the conservatives who ran the New Morality saw eye to eye on many issues, including birth control and strict obedience to moral authority. Moreover, the New Morality brought money from America into the Philippines. Some of it even trickled down enough to help the poor. So Oscar Jiminez became a ward of the New Morality. Under their stern tutelage his life of crime ended. He was sent to a New Morality school, where he learned that unrelenting psychological conditioning methods could be far worse than a police beating. Especially the conditioning sessions that used electric shock. Oscar swiftly became a model student.

CHAPTER 4

Kris Cardenas still looked little more than thirty. Even in a gritty, shabby one-room habitat carved out of one of Ceres’s countless natural crevices, she radiated the blonde, sapphire-blue-eyed, athletic-shouldered look of a California surfer. That was because her body was filled with therapeutic nanomachines, virus-sized contrivances that pulled apart molecules of fat and cholesterol in her bloodstream, repaired damaged cells, kept her skin smooth and her muscles taut, acted as a purposeful immune system to protect her body from invading microbes.